Back in the spring, Ross Barkian, who writes about New York politics, was busy covering

the mayoral primary in New York City.

When sources started coming to him and saying, listen, there is this other race, you really

should be paying attention to.

The mayoral primary in Buffalo.

What I was being told was, look, you know, this is an election where not a great number

of people vote, and also it's one where a lot of people are tired of being incumbent.

And Buffalo is changing and Walton is representative of that change.

India Walton is who Ross is referring to here.

A mayoral candidate who is a democratic socialist, a nurse, a teenage mother.

She stands all of four foot eleven.

She was challenging Buffalo's four term incumbent mayor in the Democratic primary.

Did you anticipate that Buffalo would be looking at potentially electing a self-described

socialist as mayor?

No, I did not.

And part of that is because of the nature of politics and Buffalo where there isn't really

a lot of change.

It's a city that is heavily democratic where the machines have traditionally been strong

where you have very little turnover in terms of who's in power and who we and Buffalo has

only had three meters or so since the 1970s.

But then, Walton won her primary.

It is electric in here inside the India Walton campus.

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